Prince Harry says he suffered bouts of paranoia and depression thanks to “frenzied” media attention on his love life, and believes the tabloid press wants to wreck his relationships to generate more news stories.
The Duke of Sussex said reporters attempted to break up his romantic entanglements shortly after they began, as part of a “twisted objective” to keep his private life interesting.
He claims that pursuit continues to this day, even though he is now happily married to the Duchess of Sussex.
In his phone hacking battle with Mirror Group Newspapers, Harry highlighted a series of news articles from the early 2000s during his romance with Chelsy Davy.
The Duke said a private investigator acting for a Mirror journalist “had my girlfriend under 24-hour surveillance in South Africa at the time”, and had “put a tracking device on (her) car”.
And he claimed journalists “blagged” the couple’s flight details to be able to track their movements and check into hotels before they had even arrived.
“In terms of my relationship with Chelsy, we had to conduct it over long distance, which is incredibly hard even without the frenzied interest from MGN journalists that we had to endure”, he said.
“Every time I was in a relationship or even a rumoured relationship, that whole person’s family, and often their friends, would be dragged into the chaos and find themselves the subject of unlawful activity on the part of MGN. That’s horrible for anyone. I can remember that at least one of my girlfriends told me she was warned off me by her parents saying ‘‘is it really worth all the aggravation?’ – our relationship ended shortly after.”
Harry detailed an incident when he tried to collect Ms Davy from the airport at Heathrow and found photographers were already there, waiting for the couple.
“Here were five big, burly and dodgy looking men, with their hands in their pockets or in rucksacks and satchels in a busy public place”, he said.
“My security and I simply couldn’t know whether they were reaching for a camera or drawing some kind of weapon.”
Harry said he and Ms Davy had “no down time or escape” from the media, adding: “We could also never understand how private elements of our life together were finding their way into the tabloids, and so our circle of friends became smaller and smaller.
“I remember finding it very hard to trust anyone, which led to bouts of depression and paranoia.
“Of course, now that we know that this information was invariably obtained by unlawful means, these friendships were lost entirely unnecessarily, which is a matter of huge regret for me.
“Ultimately, these factors led her to make the decision that a Royal life was not for her, which was incredibly upsetting for me at the time.”
Turning to his love life generally, Harry said women found themselves “not just in a relationship with me but with the entire tabloid press as the third party.”
He said: “I always felt as if the tabloids wanted me to be single, as I was much more interesting to them and sold more newspapers.
“Whenever I got into a relationship, they were very keen to report the details but would then, very quickly, seek to try and break it up by putting as much strain on it and creating as much distrust as humanly possible… This twisted objective is still pursued to this day even though I’m now married.”
His relationship with Ms Davy came under particular strain when he was pictured wearing a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party, and was accused in the media of sitting with another woman on his lap.
Harry said claims he was “flirting” with another woman were untrue, as he suggested details of the Daily Mirror stories had been obtained through phone hacking.
The story suggested Harry had received “a tongue lashing down the phone” for his behaviour from Ms Davy – an incident the Prince said he could not remember.
But he suggested it was a sign of phone hacking, together with missed calls to his friend Guy Pelly’s phone at the time.
“He would have been one of the people in the know after this party”, he said.
“The article contains several quotes from ‘friends’ or other ‘partygoers’, but the details about our telephone communications are not attributed to anyone, so how could the Defendant’s journalists know about this”, Harry said in his written statement.
“I don’t remember if Chelsy and I did argue about the party. Given we were based in different countries, a lot of our relationship was conducted over the telephone, so I know I would have spoken to her a lot over this time because it was a challenging period for me but I don’t recall her reaction.
“I had been immature, I hadn’t really thought about my actions and I had made a stupid decision – and my mistakes were being played out publicly.
“By this stage, Chelsy was already extremely guarded about our relationship and our circle of friends who we trusted with information about us had shrank considerably.
“Every time these kinds of stories were published, there was a strain put on our relationship, we started to distrust everyone around us. In hindsight, knowing the extent to which MGN journalists were targeting us and intercepting our communications, we probably lost friends needlessly, and put a lot of pressure on ourselves to be secretive and deal with problems without support, out of the sense of paranoia that articles like this created.”
A 2006 People story suggested the Duke had promised Ms Davy he was not given a lap dance at the Spearmint Rhino club in 2006, after she went “beserk” over the alleged incident.
“I don’t think Chelsy did go mad about me going there”, said Harry. “We did speak about it over the phone, but I promised her that I hadn’t had a lap dance and stayed with the three other cadets that had girlfriends.”
The duke said he believed journalists had access to one of their phone records and “put two and two together to make a story”.
The Duke will continue his evidence on Wednesday at 10.30am.
